Demand for Internet content such as videos, images, news articles, tweets, and weblogs is limited by the time that people have to review such content. The supply of such content is growing exponentially and to a point where Internet search engines such as Google struggle to respond with results directing users to relevant content. In many cases results can include hundreds or thousands of references to content that may or may not be relevant to the immediate interests of the user. Helping people find quality content on-line that is relevant to their interests continues to be an overwhelming and complex process. Also, lack of relevancy combined with an overwhelming amount of on-line content increases the costs and complexities involved for advertiser that wish to target users with offerings relevant to their interests, or needs.
Internet content aggregators commonly referred to as “news aggregators” have emerged to address the growing issue of overwhelming content. A goal of these Internet services is to manage less, but more popular, content in one place in ways that make review easier and more interesting for users while improving the advertiser's ability to target offerings that are relevant to the user's interests. Users can refer what they believe to be popular content from any website to an aggregation hub so that other users may review the content, leave comments in reference to the content, and rank the content according to their likes and dislikes. If a user likes the content they give it a positive rating. This action results in improved visibility of the content and an increase in popularity. Conversely if users provide negative ratings this results in less visibility of the content and subsequently a decrease in popularity.
Many content aggregation websites have emerged. However, the growing volume of Internet content is now overwhelming these aggregators because the more users refer content to them the more overwhelming searching and reviewing content becomes for their other users. Moreover, some users have also learned how to manipulate rating systems provided by aggregators. For example, a small group of users can use rating features to bury popular content, which results in less visibility.
As explained on wikipedia.com in reference to Digg.com “the existence of the “bury” option has also been criticized as undemocratic and due to its anonymous nature, unaccountable, which often leads to expungement of criticism of hotbed topics that do not mesh with the prevailing view of the community,” and goes on to explain that, “Certain Digg users have been accused of operating a “Bury Brigade” that tags news articles with which they disagree as spam, thus attempting to bury stories.” In other words, a minority of users that may be negatively affected by certain content can reduce exposure of such content by using the bury feature. Therefore, visibility of content that is potentially valuable to the broader community can be reduced, or eliminated, and without accountability.
During the 2008 United States Presidential election the Los Angeles Times published an article dated Aug. 11, 2008 that stated, “A close look at campaign-oriented stories on Digg shows that, in the last 30 days, at least 28 stories critical of GOP Sen. John McCain have been mysteriously “buried”—meaning enough Digg users have voted against a story that the submission may no longer appear on the site's high-traffic front page.”
As another example of how the “bury” option can be used to reduce visibility of content; when users rise up and post content on a news aggregator such as Digg.com relating to a complaint about a company's products or services, representatives from that company can bury it. This “bury” capability dilutes the value of centralized content aggregation for the user community majority because it reduces or eliminates exposure of the most controversial and compelling subject matter. Moreover, due to the “bury” issue the journalist, or blogger, or referring user that represents the controversial subject matter is left feeling helpless and discouraged in much the same way as people did prior to when consumer advocacy groups and class-action lawsuits formed to overcome such behavior off-line. Ultimately this issue negatively affects users as described herein as well as other participants that could benefit from the increased attention that centralized content with a high degree of user feedback could provide such as companies that desire to compete with better services, advertisers that wish to improve their ability to target users in relation to relevant subject matter, and publishers who are always looking for ways to engage users with compelling content.
Today most websites provide features enabling users to post their own comments in relation to published on-line content such as videos, images, news articles, tweets, and weblogs. Additionally, the use of RSS commonly translated as “Really Simple Syndication” or sometimes “Rich Site Summary” is a set of web feed formats used to publish frequently updated works. For example when a user subscribes to on-line content such as a news article that user will be notified when another user posts a comment related to the article. As described by wikipedia.com, “An RSS document (which is called a “feed”, “web feed”, or “channel”) includes full or summarized text, plus metadata such as publishing dates and authorship,” and goes on to explain that, “web feeds benefit readers who want to subscribe to timely updates from many sites into one place.” Users have learned how to manipulate the comment and RSS features to spread unsolicited bulk offers e.g. spam, or propaganda in an effort to skew public opinion.
Using our previous example “when users rise up and post content relating to a complaint about a company's products or services on a website that,” provides comment features; representatives from that company can easily and effectively skew public opinion by posting comments designed to mislead, or shift public opinion in relation to the complaint. It should be noted that the Internet allows users to voice their opinions with complete anonymity by using pseudonyms to hide their identity. Therefore, comment features enable anyone including those employed by the subject company to post comments that may be completely inaccurate and without accountability.
Additionally, the use of RSS features in relation to content comment features has become widespread on-line. Using the same example “when users rise up and post content relating to a complaint about a company's products or services on a website that,” provides RSS features; representatives from that company can easily and effectively skew public opinion by posting comments designed to mislead, or shift public opinion in relation to the complaint then leveraging the RSS process that notifies all users that subscribed to the subject content that a comment has been added. This allows a minority of users to skew public opinion within the minority group effectively, quickly, and without accountability. Soon interest in the posted complaint dies.
In each of these examples the users representing the subject company who took action to skew public opinion simultaneously reduced their chances to collect valuable information as to how consumers view their company and how best to adjust their products, or services in relation to consumer needs. Moreover, due to the user controlled “comment and RSS” issues the journalist, or blogger, or referring user that represents the controversial content is left to feel helpless and discouraged in much the same way as people did prior to when consumer advocacy groups and class-action lawsuits formed to overcome such behavior off-line. Ultimately this issue negatively affects users as described herein as well as other participants that could benefit from the increased attention that centralized content with a high degree of user feedback could provide such as companies that desire to compete with better services, advertisers that wish to improve their ability to target users in relation to relevant subject matter, and publishers who are always looking for ways to engage users with compelling content.
The examples expressed herein indicate how people try to manipulate on-line systems for personal and corporate gain, but they also do so for notoriety. However, polling systems both on and off line can be used to shift the power of public opinion away from user minorities that attempt to skew public opinion towards the user majority that collectively acts in favor of the broader community.
For example, In 2007 Famous radio personality and host, Howard Stern, working in conjunction with the website votefortheworst.com tried to manipulate the voting process for the popular TV show American Idol. FOX has dominated primetime TV for many years with their hit show, American Idol, in which singers compete in a talent show format and the general public casts votes. Contestants that earn the most votes continue while those with less votes are rejected from further competition. American Idol supports a voting process whereby viewers can submit their votes on-line, or use mobile devices to vote by text message for example, or by calling an American Idol representative to cast their vote. Mr. Stern tried to rally his millions of radio listeners in an effort to get them to vote for the worst American Idol performer to win and, thereby, skew the voting outcome. This prompted a statement from a Fox spokeswoman who explained; “efforts like Mr. Stern's do not affect the results. With 30 million votes every week, and hundreds of millions of votes over the season, the power of true fans of ‘American Idol’ dwarfs any attempt of people trying to gain notoriety.” In the end the best performer won because the American Idol fan base majority had a system in place to overrule the fan minority who were swayed by Howard Stern.
American Idol represents an example as to how the Internet, mobile devices, and widespread polling associated with a voting process can be used effectively to engage the viewer majority and subsequently over rule the agenda of a user minority when provided with a system enabling them to quickly and efficiently express their opinions in a structured manner.
Numerous Internet services exist today that enable users to submit their own content such as blogs, or refer published content to a central aggregation hub such as Digg.com, and to comment in reference to such content. Numerous websites also exist that enable users to express opinions about products and services such as Yelp.com. Yelp enables users to read customer reviews of local businesses such as restaurants. Another site, epinions.com, allows users to write product reviews. Numerous websites exist that poll users with questions on a per topic basis. Other services such as YahooAnswers.com allow users to ask questions for other users to answer. Then there are social-network providers such as Facebook.com, which enable users to connect based on pre-existing relationships, manage these relationships, and form affinity groups. The trend with regard to attracting interest to Internet content and engaging users is clearly towards enabling them to control the content. However, all of these services and others existing within the art provide features that can be manipulated by a user minority without oversight or accountability.
Nothing available within the existing art enables users to express themselves in relation to content in ways that can enable large scale response from the user majority within an Internet community quickly, and efficiently. The features they provide require a significant amount of time and attention from their users on an ongoing basis. As a result, an estimated 90% of users don't contribute directly they only review content referred, or published by a minority set of users, and do so within a highly fragmented and easily abused Internet services environment.
As a result of the issues expressed herein advertisers continue to struggle with complexities related to targeting their desired audience with offerings that are relevant to the user's interests or needs. This issue reduces user engagement and related revenues not just for advertisers, but for Internet content publishers, and other contributors such as journalists or bloggers as well. As a result Internet advertising networks resort to highly sophisticated methods of tracking user behavior on websites to improve their abilities to increase user engagement per ad. This frequently leads to an invasion of user privacy. Currently there are very few ways to target Internet advertisements with a high degree of relevancy based on the needs of Internet users, and fewer ways to do so without invading their privacy.
Despite the advances in Internet services designed to publish, or aggregate content such as videos, images, news articles, tweets, and weblogs, and for users to interact with such content there is a need for an Internet service that mitigates issues associated with user group minorities “burying” content for their benefit and without accountability by providing a system that highlights all popular content, especially the most controversial, and with a rating system that ranks content based on user attention whether that attention is positive, or negative.
There is a need to mitigate issues relating to a user minority leveraging Internet “comment and RSS” features to spread unsolicited offers e.g. spam, or to mislead or skew public opinion for their own benefit by providing a system designed to engage the broader user community e.g. majority and enable these users to work together on a large scale through collective oversight to quickly and efficiently express their opinions concerning topics of interest and the actions of the user minority.
There is a need for a system that can engage the broader user community in ways that enable the user majority to overrule a user minority regardless of the use of pseudonyms to protect identity, and for the benefit of the overall user community.
There is a need to mitigate issues relating to targeted advertising and user privacy invasion by collecting consumer feedback in the form of answers to survey questions relating to the subject matter of popular content on a scale large enough to make this data meaningful to advertisers, and organized into general categories based on the subject matter of the content so that advertisers can create campaigns based on how users responded to surveys in relation to content instead of continuing to collect the user's personal data.
There is a need for a system that can streamline and bring structure to the process of engaging the broader user community e.g. majority in ways that enable them to respond to controversial topics on a large scale quickly, efficiently, and effectively not only to provide the majority over-ruling the minority dynamic, but to enable users to form affinity groups in relation to controversial topics and mobilize in ways that benefit communities through driving organized change similar to how consumer advocates and class-action lawsuits leverage the combined interests of people.
These and other needs are addressed in this paper.